Thicc Theologies Save Lives

Abstract

The Christian tradition has long presented the ideal Christian woman as slender, serene, and fertile. In this article, I demonstrate that this is both a historical trope and a contemporary reality. Drawing on my own autoethnographic reflections of my experience in conservative Christian circles, I articulate the problems being emotional, infertile, and fat caused in this context. I turn to the Shulammite woman in the Song of Songs as offering a model for a body-loving revolution that might enable the development of thicc theologies – theologies that delight in abundance and embodiedness and resist patriarchal and colonial dominations – that might just save (spiritual) lives.